Crazy Monkeys on Game Design.

May 31, 2009http://digitaltools.node3000.com/blog/1181-air-pirates-from-cactus-lo-fi-minds

Experimental storytelling Sunday! Air Pirates is a game by Cactus, he made with his studio Lo-Fi Minds for e4. It is flash and it will be released next month. The trailer indeed convices by blocky and dirty style, ill colored pixels and music from The Death Set.

A short, but interesting platformer experiment is “Sad Torino Girly Harry” from beef and cow. It was made for the “Poppenkast 3 hours astronaut” competition. Aim was to make a space-game in 3 hours and mention the cast. The game is as confusing as its name - experimental in nature and really worth 3 minutes of playing fun! Get the game here.
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May 29, 2009http://digitaltools.node3000.com/blog/1173-nfg-arcade-retro-font-maker

A nice tool for creating font-graphics, derived from classic arcade games is the NFG Arcade Font Maker. You can select from a loooong list of classic-games, from Boulder Dash to Fantasy Zone, Tetris or Wonder Boy. Than you can type in your desired text, and - viola! - magic happens. You can save the text and use it as you wish. (via)

May 26, 2009http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scnclr/~3/JazEEAgtmXU/5-all-new

SCNCLR finally moved over to WordPress… leaving some self-developed rails-code behind. Yes, that are the sad news. The good news are, that within the next weeks a new - the first official - flash-game will be released. HERE you have two screenshots:

Title ScreenIngame

The game is will be called ‘scnclr-X‘, or short ‘X‘, and will be a small casual game with addictive qualities. It is quite minimal, but fun to play.

While this site is now on WordPress, I will unveil all WordPress-Plugin goodness four you: the fan and future customer. Just to enhance the overall experience, as well as the interactivity of this site. Expect things to come!

May 25, 2009http://digitaltools.node3000.com/blog/1153-cosmic-osmo-point-and-click

Torley made a great review on an old game for the Mac called Cosmic Osmo. Although this game is from 1989 and only features black, white and some grayscale colors, it looks outstanding interesting. The game is a point and click adventure, and got some pretty nice humor. The soundeffects are great as well. You best simply take a look at the video-review from Torley.

At least interesting is, that the game took only 10 days to develop, utilizing a self-made flash-framework for 2D-games, called Flixel. It should have some not-so-obvious algorithmic wonders behind the curtain (as you obviously can experience at Fathom) and should see the first public release soon!

May 18, 2009http://digitaltools.node3000.com/blog/1125-underworld-trip-minimal-jumpnrun-game

Pixelgames are keeping coming. What are all this shaders, 3D-worlds and multi-user platforms worth, if you can have instant, bloated fun with games like Underworld Trip? The gameplay is most easy (walk through the level, avoid obstacles), the style pixly and “interlaced”. The soundtrack very minimal but highly functional atmospheric. There is a narrative as well, but this you better explore for yourself. Be ready for a real small-scale trip! (via)

May 16, 2009http://digitaltools.node3000.com/blog/1096-random-nature-visualised

Daniel A. Becker works freelance, got high-awarded prices and finally published his diploma-thesis he made at the FH Mainz in Germany. The thesis Random Walk is a deep exploration of the phenomena “random”. The interplay of random and order: Order claims, that random do not exist or has no significance. We all know, that this isn’t true. On the other side even pure random generates patterns and systems - although it claims, that it is patternless by default.

“Random Walk is for all those people, who are interested in the mystic term of random. In ten visualisations things can been seen from the field of math and physics, that ask about coincidence. The shown models always merge two opposites to one picture, that forms our view of random: chaos and order. The visualisations are not only illustrations, but the result of real simulations and at the same time the proof for this symbiotic relationship.”

He explores quite interesting things, like the distribution of prime-numbers or the decay time of things. Daniel also made two visual semester-projects Visual DNA and Barcode Plantage. At Slanted is a in-depth interview with him, but it is in German. The thesis was made with processing and included some heavy-simulation and number-processing, due to the nature of this topic. For other works he also utilizes Flash and Actionscript.

May 14, 2009http://digitaltools.node3000.com/blog/1089-computer-generated-procedural-city

Shamus Young explored the beauty of code by building a “Pixel City”. In ten iterations he build the steps, to create a unique city at night.

Procedural content part 1: sort of windows-texture.

Finished Procedural content: say what?
It is pretty remarkable, that building procedural content is not as hard as it looks, if you think in step by step logic. Take every step gracefully, and you will build your city in record-time. And receive unlimited ways to explore your own creation. The whole process is documented on his website in-depth. This video shows each single step:

http://1000ff.de/braid-lohnt-sich/

Braid is a puzzle-platformer, drawn in a painterly style, where you can manipulate the flow of time in strange and unusual ways. From a house in the city, journey to a series of worlds and solve puzzles to rescue an abducted princess. In each world, you have a different power to affect the way timeWeiterlesen...

I totally fell in love with this wonderful trailer of the otaku-festival. Simply a unique work of art. And who had thought… This festival was not held in Japan, but in the middle of south-east Europe: in Romania.

…who had ever said, that a game-character cannot be a pixel, disguised as a simple square?

May 13, 2009http://gamedesignscrapbook.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-have-fun-in-mass-effect.html

May 6, 2009http://digitaltools.node3000.com/blog/1037-cactus-on-designing-games-in-4-hours

About

Bonoboblogs is an agglomerated blog of people who are into game design or related art. We tend to be clever and open and have fresh views on computing games. We fill the gap between experimental gameplay, game design and theory. More about.